Secret BBC guide to be released

A SECRET guide that has helped generations of BBC newsreaders pronounce difficult words and bizarre-sounding names is to be released for the first time. The Oxford BBC Guide to Pronunciation, due to be published next week, is an updated version of the tome, used since the days presenters wore dinner jackets on air.

A SECRET guide that has helped generations of BBC newsreaders pronounce difficult words and bizarre-sounding names is to be released for the first time.

The Oxford BBC Guide to Pronunciation, due to be published next week, is an updated version of the tome, used since the days presenters wore dinner jackets on air.

The training manual, which contains more than 16,000 words, phrases and tongue-twisting names and places, offers advice on words like schedule, controversy and kilometre, which can all be pronounced in more than one way.

It also focuses on modern headline makers such as al-Qaida and JK Rowling.

The book includes the correct way to get to grips with foreign monikers.

There is also a mention of the right way to say Sudoku, the number puzzle craze from Japan or `soo-doh-koo' and the name of rapper Kanye West - `kahn-yay west'. The authors even maintain the book could serve as a handy guide to sort out pub arguments, solving such heated debates as whether to say `shed-yool' or `sked-yool' for schedule.

Strict regime

As an authority in the broadcasted word, the BBC has always maintained a strict regime of getting it right on air.

Lord Reith, the corporation's first director general, decided it had to observe strict standards of pronunciation to win the respect of viewers.

He set up an Advisory Committee on Spoken English, whose members included George Bernard Shaw and the poet laureate of the day Robert Bridges.

Today the BBC has a Pronunciation Unit which has a database of 200,000 words, names and phrases of words that could leave some newsreaders tonguetied.

Recent examples include the current leader of the Liberal Democrats Menzies Campbell whose first name is actually pronounced `ming-iss'.

The BBC also regularly enlists the help of foreign language speakers from Arabic to Spanish to Japanese, to make sure there are no mistakes.

A spokesman for Oxford University Press explained: "The unique combination of the BBC's worldwide expertise in pronunciation with OUP's experience in reference publishing makes this an indispensable resource for journalists, teachers, students, people working in the media, and anyone interested in pronunciation and in saying things right."

The book's authors Lena Olausson and Catherine Sangster of the BBC Pronunciation Unit, said: "We get requests for help from news programmes but also from music programmes and, in particular, quizzes such as Mastermind.